


Very Superior Old Pale

by Calliopinot



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 20:52:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14065350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calliopinot/pseuds/Calliopinot
Summary: Charles is back from the dead, and Nathan demands answers. An expensive bottle of brandy stands between two awkward men and their true feelings.





	Very Superior Old Pale

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for sexyoffdensen :)

It was later, now.

Nathan had lived every day of the last nine months and two weeks with the image of the man with the silver face seared into his retinas. If only he’d gotten there a minute earlier, a second, maybe he’d still be alive…

…But he was alive! He was back, and he was alive, by some miracle they couldn’t understand.

“That’s a story for later.”

Nathan had lived nine months and two weeks absolutely certain that he’d watched his manager and friend get beaten to death, with the knowledge that he didn’t intervene in time. It was too late for “later.”

It was later, now.

“So you gonna tell me what happened, or what?”

He had the presence of mind to wait until the other guys passed out before cornering Offdensen in his quarters. After the concert, on the chopper, in the common room with everyone abuzz with excitement about the improbable return of their beloved manager, asking but not really about where he’d been and how he came back to life, Nathan had to stifle his inquiry. Too likely was he to blow into a rage that would be even more difficult to explain to the assembled crowd than how Charles managed to cheat death.

“Nathan! What are you doing here?”

“Answer me.”

“Ah…” At present, Offdensen was half dressed – half undressed, more accurately – and halfway through a deeply missed bottle of Armagnac. Not exactly the time for fireside chats. “Can’t this hold until morning, Nathan?”  _Like, after you’ve gotten blackout drunk and forgotten all about it?_

Nathan invited himself the rest of the way into Offdensen’s room – his private space, his sanctuary where none of the boys had ever dared bother him before – and slammed the door behind him. Okay. This was different.

“It’s  _held_  for nine months and two weeks. I watched that guy kill you.”

This was very different.

“Oh. I, ah, didn’t realize.” Charles gestured to the foot of his bed. Nathan hesitated. He came ready to yell and scream and get thrown out. But he accepted the seat, even though it felt like crossing a thousand forbidden borders, and the glass of brandy, even though it wrinkled his nose, and the gentle hand Charles placed on his knee as joined him, even though it made his stomach do backflips.

“Uhh…”

Offdensen could see how uncomfortable it was making him, yet he didn’t move his hand. There were a couple things he wanted out of this rendezvous, too, and he was glad Nathan took the first step, because it would have been impossible for him to.

“I can’t tell you everything. I don’t know everything, myself. But I can tell you I’m sorry. I know it was hard on you boys, my, ah, being gone.”

“Dead.”

Charles cleared his throat into his snifter. “Ah. Yes. I know it hurt you. It hurt me too, being away from you, not being able to guide and protect you, even though what I was off doing was protecting you, in a way.”

Nathan squirmed under the emotional reciprocation. It never occurred to him that Charles cared too, actually cared about them, and not just the bottom line. Nor that his suffering matched theirs – even exceeded it, if this mysterious journey was as perilous as his hints suggested.

It was a punch to the gut, the flood of realization, and it made Nathan physically double over in pain.

And then a deceptively strong arm encircled his massive shoulders, pulled him in close, and permitted the tears to fall.

“You still haven’t told me what happened and this is SO GAYYY.”

The sobs that wracked Nathan’s entire body shook the small man beside him.

“Ahh—” Offdensen rescued the singer’s glass just as it threatened to topple onto the floor. “This Armagnac is $1300 a bottle.”

Nathan looked up at him, face a mess. “ _That’s_  fucking gay. Uh, no offense.”

Charles recoiled slightly. To what part of that remark, exactly, was he supposed to take offense? 

“Ah, well, Nathan, I would think by now you’d have learned to appreciate the value of rare goods. This brandy survived World War II, which is, ah, quite brutal—”

Nathan chuckled softly. Charles recoiled even further. He’d never heard such a sound out of the frontman.

“I mean, you know, I didn’t mean to, uh, call it gay.”

“Why – ah – that is, you boys have never exactly been careful with your choice of insults.”

Charles withdrew completely, away from Nathan and back into his glass. He’d blown his opportunity. Nathan was making fun of him. The raised corner of his lip and his brow said it all.

“I was dead. At least, on paper. I woke up someplace far away in a great deal of pain. I’m still in a great deal of pain. I’m sorry I was gone for so long.”

He sat down the emptied snifter and stood. The conversation was over.

But rather than take the hint, Nathan took up his own half-full glass. He swirled the syrupy brown liquid, like he’d watched Charles do, and took a sniff. Suppressed a cough. Tried another sip. Suppressed a gag.

“Uh, yeah, it’s uh, you know, not bad. Smells pretty brutal, I’ll give you that.”

Charles rolled his eyes. This, coming from the man who drank bleach like it was Kool-Aid.

“Nathan, if we’re done here, I’m really very tired—”

“You know, uh,  _Charles_.” He enunciated every letter in the man’s name like he’d never said it out loud before, as he watched sticky legs slide down the inside of the glass. “The other thing’s not bad either. The uh.” Cleared his throat. “ _The Gay. Thing._ ”

Charles’s brows practically receded into his uncharacteristically unkempt hair. Was this a confession? A profession? From  _Nathan Explosion_? Nathan Explosion, who looked at him with expectant, slightly watery, increasingly annoyed eyes.

Charles wasn’t often speechless, but he’d given up on this particular fantasy not five minutes ago. 

“FUCK!” Nathan sent 80 bucks worth of brandy flying across Offdensen’s priceless Persian rug as he stood in a huff. “This is stupid! You’re stupid, I’m an idiot, and all of this is, just, dumb, stupid idiot bullshit!”

Now was Charles’s turn to smirk. He grabbed Nathan firmly by the wrist before the singer could storm off.

“WHAT!?”

“Nathan. If, ah, I’m understanding correctly, you’re expressing an interest – a curiosity, if you will – in romantic partners of the same sex. Can I extrapolate further, since you’re here in my room, and – I’m not sure if you realize this, but your thumb is stroking the back of my hand – that these feelings are directed towards me?”

Charles Foster Offdensen never was a man to mince words. Especially not now that the object of his own desire had drifted so improbably close to his grasp.

“Uhhhhh…”

Charles faced Nathan full on, taking his other meaty paw in hand with a true smile.

“Good. Because I feel the same way. I have for quite a while but, well, the nature of our circumstances, among other things, prohibited—”

Nathan shushed his rambling with the softest of kisses, square on his lips.

“Huh. Yeah. That’s not bad at all.”

“I, ah. Yes, I’d have to agree.”

“What’re we gonna tell the guys?”

“Nothing, for now. There’s plenty of precedent for interoffice romance, so legally we’re in the clear, although in this particular situation—”

Again, Nathan silenced him.

“Ok. You’re right.”

The big bear of a man pulled his manager into a big bear of a hug. He had him back, and not only that, he had him.

“Oh, and, ah, Nathan?”

Dreamy, content, Nathan peered down at the prodigal Charles Offdensen.

“You owe me $82.50. Don’t worry, I’ll eat the cleaning charge for the rug.”


End file.
